Growing Our Faith

Those of us in this sanctuary this morning come from widely different backgrounds. Most of us were born in another part of the country, or even outside this country. (I was born in south Texas. I’m not sure if that counts as outside this country or not.)

One thing the vast majority of us has in common, though, is that we made a decision to walk through the doors of this church for the first time. We came in search of something. Most of us have experienced something like that first day Jill Armstrong describes in her chalice lighting this morning. We are here because we have chosen this as our religious home. Something drew us here.

I often tell the story of the first time my wife Phyllis, my daughter Marcela and I got up the courage to visit the Unitarian Universalist church in Eugene, Oregon. Like Jill and her family, we were looking for community. We were looking for something different from the churches in which we had been raised. We, too, were looking for a church where our daughter could learn and grow. We did not want to pretend that we believed things we found unbelievable. We, like most of you, were looking for a place where we could join hands with others to work to create a better world.

You and I have found a religious home here.

How many people just like us do you think there are here in the western part of the metro area? How many progressive, open minded and good hearted people are there who have no religious home, who feel out of place in a more orthodox religious setting? How many parents are there who want their children to learn lasting spiritual and ethical values rather than dogma and fear? How many people are living lives of isolation and loneliness—people who long for friendship and connection? How many gay, lesbian and transgender people are there who long for a place where they are not ostracized, where they are accepted, where they can just be themselves?

There are thousands upon thousands of us.

Now for a moment imagine how many people just like us there are in our nation. How many progressive, good hearted people are spiritually hungry and religiously homeless in America today? There are hundreds of thousands. There are millions.

And just look around at America today. We live in troubled times. We live in a culture of paranoia and confusion. We live in a culture where bigotry and ignorance masquerade as Christianity. Just this week, in a radio news story about the resignation of Representative Tom DeLay, I heard a voter in his Texas congressional district say how disappointed she was that DeLay was resigning. She said she had always supported him because he is a Christian. A Christian. A follower of Jesus. Can you imagine anyone nicknaming Jesus “The Hammer”? Can you imagine Jesus raising millions of dollars to promote the interests of the rich? I thought following Jesus meant loving my neighbor as I love my self. I thought following Jesus meant treating the most humble person as if he or she were Jesus himself. I thought following Jesus meant learning to forgive others. What has happened when people think being a Christian is consistent with big money lobbying and political back stabbing?

Ours is a society that is allowing fear, greed and ignorance to create a modern mutation of fascism. Fascism is the linking together of three essential ingredients: conservative religion, extreme nationalism, and militarism. Conservative religion, extreme nationalism, and militarism. Sound familiar? Ours is a culture that is afraid. It is afraid of immigrants, afraid of terrorists, afraid of scientists, afraid of gays, afraid of African Americans, afraid of Latino Americans, afraid of Muslim Americans. People who are paranoid and ignorant do frightening things. The souls of thousands of our neighbors and millions of our countrymen are deeply troubled. These souls are vulnerable to easy answers—answers that create division and scapegoats. People who are afraid can be made to see enemies everywhere.

We live in a time that desperately needs a different religious message. We live in a time that urgently needs a religious message of comfort, a message of hope, a message of love, reason and tolerance. We need a message that says every single person matters, that each of us is connected to each other, that the common humanity that unites us is far more important than our differences. We need a religious message that urges us to gather together, listen to one another with an open heart and an open mind, and truly get to know each other. We need a religious message that says that we need to take care of this earth.

The need for our religious message is just gigantic. At the personal level, people need a spiritual home — a place when they can belong, grow and serve. At the level of the greater society, we need a religious movement for our new age: a religious movement that is respectful of the world’s great religious traditions, a movement that welcomes all people, a movement more concerned with hope, love and freedom than with fear, intolerance and orthodoxy. Friends, that is us.

For the last week or so we have been celebrating our church’s history and looking to our future. After twenty years with a membership of 400, seven years ago our church started to grow again. We crept up to 450, a new all time high, and we thought that was pretty exciting. A couple of years later we hit 520 members. We conducted a fund raising campaign to remodel and expand. Two years ago we had climbed up to 580 members. In the last year and a half we have shot up to more than 725. During these last seven years we have been one of the half dozen fastest growing churches in our denomination.

Why aren’t all our churches growing as fast or faster than us?

When we look at our movement we have cause for deep concern. Our movement is the same size it was forty years ago: just over 150,000 adult members in just over a thousand congregations. With the growth in the total population, that means that our share of the religious landscape has actually declined. We declined in numbers back in the 1970s. In the last 20 years we have grown about one percent per year, but that is far slower than the population as a whole.

Let me put that in perspective. We have just over one thousand congregations. For the last generation we have been growing at the rate of one member per congregation per year. One member per congregation per year. That’s pitiful. Actually, the national numbers do not reflect what is really going on. The fact is that about fifteen churches account for a quarter of all our growth. The 60 fastest growing churches—that’s only six percent of our congregations—account for two thirds of our growth.

Now, I don’t want to drown you with statistics. The simple fact is that most of our congregations are not growing. Yet these congregations, just like us, are surrounded by people who are hungry for community, for depth, for commitment, for a life of faith.

What the heck is going on? Our movement shouldn’t be a little bigger than it is. Our movement should be ten or twenty or fifty times bigger than it is. What is going on?

As many of you know, I left JUC four years ago to take a position with our national headquarters in Boston. I left JUC because I hoped to do more at the national level to help our movement grow. I left the national association because I saw that what it was doing to help grow our movement was useless and ineffective. In the last six years the movement has spent about a million and a half dollars trying to spur growth through marketing and through starting a new church that was supposed to go from zero to a thousand members in a few years. That church grew to 70 members with as many full time staff as we have. In the last six years JUC has accounted for more growth than all our denomination’s growth efforts combined. That’s pitiful.

What went wrong? Oh, I could rant for hours. The short version is that we lost our way because we worshipped idols. Somehow we allowed ourselves to be seduced by the notion that we could grow our movement by being clever. We thought if we studied demographics, if we produced really shrewd advertising messages and if we spent enough money we could get people to flock to us.

Frankly, our national association has made an incredible mess of its growth efforts. Yet that does not explain why the majority of our churches are not growing. The association’s misguided and mismanaged efforts are frustrating, but they don’t explain why our movement is not growing.
I don’t have all the answers. But I know this: we will never grow our movement by using slick advertising. We can’t grow our movement by trying to create a handful of new church starts at a cost of more than a million dollars each.

We can only grow our movement if more of the hundreds of thousands of people who come to our churches every year seeking a religious home actually find what they are seeking. Thousands of people come into our churches for the first time every week. Tragically, most do not return. Why?

People come looking for a religious home. They want to feel like they belong. Just like every one of us, people need to feel like they are wanted. They want for their hearts to be touched and their minds engaged. People want to participate in making the world a better place. They want a place where their children can grow and be nurtured. Too often they just don’t find that.

The only growth strategy we need is religion. If we are true to our religion, our movement will grow by leaps and bounds. If we are true to our religion, we will grow because we will feed the souls of people who come.

Our religion teaches that everybody matters. Our religion teaches kindness and compassion. Our religion teaches acceptance of one another. Our religion teaches respect for all religious traditions and seeks to learn from them. Our religion does not pretend to have all the answers. Our religion respects science and reason. Our religion teaches us to love the earth and care for the web of life. Our religion teaches us that, because everybody matters, we are obligated to work for peace and justice. Our religion teaches that children should be loved and protected, not indoctrinated.

We don’t need to be clever. We need to be faithful. When we are faithful to our religion we treat each other and visitors like members of our family — because we know they are members of our family. When we are faithful to our religion our hearts are filled with love and joy. And it shows. When we are faithful to our religion, our lives are filled with purpose and meaning. And it shows.

I titled this sermon “Growing Our Faith.” I intend the title to suggest a double meaning. At one level, of course, I am talking about numerical growth, about making room in our home for more people. My other meaning is about each one of us growing our personal faith. And by our personal faith I do not mean believing theological propositions. By personal faith I mean being faithful to our ideals.

When you and I are faithful to our ideals of compassion, community and commitment, our lives flower. When you and I really get religion, our lives have new meaning. Love flows naturally from us. We make a difference.

When people outside our congregation see and experience the joy, love and commitment of faithful people, they naturally want to be part of it. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that? Growing our personal faith and growing our movement are the same thing.

We have grown our congregation because the love we have for each other and the commitment we have to our ideals are palpable.

Our readings this morning speak of how each of us needs to act. Vaclav Havel reminds us that “It is I who must begin.” Annie Dillard tells us that “there is nobody else. There never has been.” Or, in the unforgettable words of Gerry Garcia, the late rock music legend of The Grateful Dead, “Somebody has to do something. It is just incredibly pathetic that it should be us.”

We at JUC have a crucial role to play both here at home and in our larger movement.

The first priority, of course, is for us to remain faithful. We must welcome the stranger because deep down we know the stranger is us. The visitor walking up sidewalk is us. We remain faithful by making room for the those who would join us. We remain faithful by building caring relationships among ourselves. We remain faithful by doing an even better job of raising our children. We remain faithful by doing even more to serve our community and by being fearless advocates for compassion and justice. In the coming years growing this congregation is going to take tremendous work and commitment. Our faith calls us to do it.
But we must look beyond JUC. Our larger movement needs us and the other churches like us. We need to find ways of leading our movement, of helping to bring it back to its best self. We are already recognized as leaders. We are asked to conduct workshops at General Assembly and district gatherings.

We must do more. We must help train ministers who will be effective leaders. Two members of our congregation are studying for the ministry. Over time we need to help send other passionate people into the ministry.

In the coming months and years, we need to look for ways to join forces with the scores of other dynamic, growing, vital congregations in our movement. I do not know what form that will take. We need to be open; we need to be creative.

This I do know: the world is crying out for a religion like ours.

Somebody needs to do something. You and I cannot turn our backs on the need all around us.

We must respond. Not somebody else, for there is no one else.

We can do this. We have proved we can do it.

Let us begin here at home. Let us continue to welcome all who would make this their home.

And let us help to lead our movement. Let us carry the message that what we must be faithful to our religion, faithful to our ideals.

The love in our hearts will guide us. The passion in our hearts will empower us.

Somebody has to do something. There is no one else.

Come, let us grow our faith together.

Amen.